A glance at preventive medicine in 1769 and in 1874 / by Charles Frederick Moore.

  • Moore, Charles Frederick.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A glance at preventive medicine in 1769 and in 1874 / by Charles Frederick Moore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    days of Wm. Congreve, Steele, Farquhar, Addison, Swift, Prior, Crowe, Dryden, Pope, Parnel, Garth, Guy, Young, Thomson, Jno. Locke, Berkley, and many others. We have more in common with the fact that it was about that time the physician's library was enriched with many useful modern produc- tions ; with the works of the classical Freind, the elegant Mead, the accurate Huxham, and the philosophical Pringle. The art of midwifery was elucidated by science, reduced to fixed principles, and almost wholly consigned into the hands of men practitioners. The researches of anatomy were prosecuted to some curious discoveries by the ingenuity and dexterity of a Hunter and a Monro. The numerous hospitals in London (and Mi-. Mortimer might have added those also of Dublin) contributed to the improvement of surgery, which was brought to perfection under the auspices of a Cheselden and a Sharpe. Our own island was not behindhand in progress, for we find that the Royal Hospital had been some time built, and Steevens', Mercer's, St. Patrick's, so well known as Swift's; that for Incurables, then in Fleet- street ; Dr. Moss's in Great Britain-street; St. Nicholas', Francis-street, the old Meath Hospital, the Hibernian Hospital in the Park, the Foundling Hospital and Workhouse, the House of Industry, the Bluecoat Hospital, the Royal Dublin Society, the Royal Irish Academy, the Hibernian Marine Society, and other valued and useful institutions, were founded or in working. Such evidence of care for the sick, for the land and sea services—such energy of character—such literary talent—aye, and such evidence of the power of satire, as was manifest in the works of Hogarth and others who plied pen and pencil, and showed, in other ways, their disapproval of what was wrong, or believed to be so—existed on every side a hundred years ago. Commerce, too, was thriving, as seen in the growth of the Honourable East India Company; enterprise existed with many, not always to repay its possessors, as proved by the South Sea Bubble. All this time the people of the British Isles maintained, with more or less success and renown, war with many powerful enemies. Solid evidence of successes remains in many of our colonial possessions, and of our reverses, no doubt sent for the best purposes, in the great Republic across the Atlantic. That science, which is the more immediate object of this notice, might to a great extent be said to have taken a definite form at this period.